Organization Structure at Hyperloop

The Fifteen Seconds Festival continues to have an effect. And we want to pass this effect. That’s why we are sharing our insights from the two days at the Festival. In our blogpost with Shazam founder Philip Inghelbrecht we were talking about the technical factors, that are needed to lead your company’s innovations to success. And here comes new input. At the Fifteen Seconds Festival our colleague Silja Andrej got the chance to talk with Bibop Gresta, vice CEO and COO at Hyperloop Transportations, one of the most innovative companies worldwide.

We’ve asked Bibop Gresta, which organization structure is needed to lead a modern company and how it works to combine innovational spirit, globalization and work process management. The handsome Italian, who was – aged 15 –working as Software Development director and later on as a singer, mentioned these following aspects:

1| Modern communication tool for international cooperationA company like Hyperloop, that is spread over different countries and time zones needs more than email and phone for internal communication. Such a tool should be easy to use, have a nice overview, be used as communication and content hub, as well as deliver interfaces. Bibop Gresta is with Hyperloop trusting in Facebook at Work – a tool, that isn’t sold so far, Hyperloop is testing partner.

„We are using a tool to manage our communication: Facebook at Work. It’s a great tool. That’s it. I can actually travel the world and manage my company using my phone. I am always one click away to see who’s doing what. I can monitor every single group. If there is something new happening, I can see it. That’s really cool.”

No matter on which tool you decide: a modern organization structure needs a simple and clear tool, that offers integrations and is easy to use mobile. Luckily the market is huge.

2| Agile organization structure with Scrum It’s no secretIf you want your company to succeed with innovations, you have to leave fixed structures and steep hierarchies. They don’t offer enough space for impulses from the bottom. Only if employees are offered spaces, where they can share ideas and opinions, you can use them. Agile organization structure is defined through self-organized teams, high individual responsibility, a lot of trust and little control, continuous evolvement and learning. To implement such agile structures, many companies, Anexia as well, are trusting in the project management tool Scrum. Bibop Gresta gives insights, how the daily life with Scrum looks like at Hyperloop:

„We are organized in groups in seven people +/- two, which are organized around tasks. We don’t have the classical pyramid. People get assigned tasks. They unit around the tasks and decide who will be the master of the task. The master coordinates the effort to solve the task. And then there is the general project manager, that is basically defining, what are the tasks. A team stays in one team for one Scrum sprint, which lasts four to five weeks, depending on the task. Everything, that can be achieved in this week stays in, everything else stays out and becomes another task.”

Did you know? The name Scrum comes from Rugby: The mentors of this project management method Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi wanted to stress the meaning of the team and show analogies to sports, when it is about the development of a new product.

3|Creativity in the workspaceAs already shortly mentioned earlier, creativity should find its space in the workspace to enhance innovations and to get value out of that. That reminded Bibop Gresta, who was a successful singer, of the concept of a renaissance scientist like Michel Angelo:

„In the fifteenth century, scientists were artists. Every single scientist was an artist. They were painters or they were poets. Science and art was the same thing. But then there was a problem. The art was paid by religion. When scientists started to discover, what was the truth and you know, religion was lying a lot – there started a little crash between science and art. The artist was saying something, while the scientist was saying something else. So there was a little split between the two. That’s a pity. We have to go back into the real essence of science, which is art. And I think, I’m incarnating exactly this. I’m a renaissance man.”

Bibop Gresta’s idea might sound unfamiliar. But there is a truth in it, although not all of us are good singers: Because, what else are creativity and art than innovation, the number one factor of success of the 21. Century?

4 | Don’t be afraid of adventures„I think we are assisting at a giant revolution”, Bibop Gresta is saying about the current start of the first Hyperloop test tracks. Who would have expected that: Only three years ago, mastermind and founder Elon Musk has gone public with his idea. But, to be honest: Just the really crazy heads actually thought, the technology would be that far be now, that 2016 the first test track are built. Elon Musk, Bibop Gresta and their team proved, that it is possible to make the impossible true. That costs a lot of courage. Kudos to you!

5| Draw on abundant resources
Access to global knowledge. 2016: a network of data covers the world, communication tools are simple to use and almost everywhere in use. Algorithms make it possible to filter information via search options. This is our current model of accessing the global pool of knowledge. So simple and obvious that may sound, in communication lays the key to success:

„We have the giant opportunity to follow the start of the first Hyperloop as a reality show. And that’s good, because people can contribute to make it happen. There wasn’t this possibility earlier on. Nowadays we can adopt the best minds in the planet and listen to everybody. Everyone has ideas that are valuable. Sometimes you don’t know, where you will get the best hint to solve the problem. That’s why we are using an open, crowdsourced and cooperative approach. Using things, that are already existing, we can go faster or build cheaper.”

When you are listening to Bibop Gresta, you almost start to believe that not much is needed to start a project like Hyperloop. But of course, there is a lot of work, engagement and definitely passion involved. Thanks for the input, we’re looking forward to let the ideas sprout in our company.

Anexia is

ANEXIA offers quality, customized solutions for web and managed hosting as well as individual software and app development. The company was founded in 2006 in Klagenfurt, Austria, and now has additional offices in Vienna, Munich, Cologne and New York City to serve numerous international customers.